Friday, August 01, 2014

The Iron Dumb

A Moderate Conservative's tearful TED Talk on the origins of the Tea Party.

Dear Moderate Conservative,

Whatever your infantile intentions might have been way back in the scary past (which you steadfastly refuse to face) in the here-and-now the monster you made is now on the loose.

And it's winning! Which mean's you're winning! So why aren't you cheering?

The monster you made is winning because, just as the original blueprints for your Glorious Revolution specified, you now have a Gen-U-Wine True Believer -- Rafael Edward "Fail-Gunner Ted" Cruz -- at the head of an huge, well-funded army of like-minded fanatics. And with the unstinting assistance of crackpot billionaires and media moguls, in your name they have have finally completed the construction of a 100% effective, taxpayer-funded Iron Dumb shield of pure bigoted dumbassery over the nation's capital capable of shooting down any incoming legislation which does not meet their already-ludicrous and increasingly-demented litmus test of Conservative ideological purity.

Wow, you really didn't read Conservatism's owner's manual before you pluncked down your cash did you?

See, all those things -- helping those in need of help, fighting uphill to make humane and tolerant democracy an effective weapon against it's eternal nemeses of ignorance, bigotry and fascist, earning the esteem of the international community by living our values -- those are Liberal values.

Liberal virtues.

Conservatism -- your Conservatism -- is about the radical undoing of all of that. Terminating America's democratic experiment and rolling back all restrictions on direct corporate control of every inch of this country has been the GOP's Prime Directive for the last +40 years, so I don't really understand how you could have missed that. In your name they have methodically and successfully configured the incentive structure of your party to reward those who gleefully sabotage the government -- your government -- and positively crucify anyone who tries to contain or repair the damage.

And after decades of work and billions of dollars spent in your name they have every element they need in place to finally finish the job -- control of enough of the government to inflict serious, long-term damage and an army of wingnut Reavers insane enough to continue handing them the electoral ammunition to keep their campaign of sedition and demolition going year after year after year.

9 comments:

Or, to put it another way, borrowing from one of their own sacred texts:

"You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins; it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection."

They aren't cheering because the rubes are in fucking charge. They wouldn't care if they were running the show.

There are a few things where the "both sides" charge holds 100% fucking true. That's when you get to the "establishment" and "elite" of both sides. They are agree on just about everything, they just use different rubes for power. And the rule number of power, is you don't let your followers, rubes, suckers, idealists, BASE take it from you. You use them, they don't use you.

And that's their fucking problem, they aren't in control, they lost their power and it's very unlikely they will get it back. They can't not deliver for the base and keep their jobs, and going with their base will cost them their power.

To make matters worse, the dems don't have this issue. They can do whatever they want and still get elected because all they have to say is "look at the Republicans, Palin will make your daughter carry rape babies and Santorum will kill all your gays" and the liberal base will vote for them even as they sign the trade agreements, cut entitlements, puff up DC and NYC, because the threat of the social losses is too great.

Keeping that in mind, that means a lot of big business coastal money is going to go to a much more business friendly Democratic party then before. And their will go more of their jobs and more of their power. A liberal powerhouse of conservative economic values for the elites defending their own, and most of the country, against white Christians.

That's going to be great, and it's something that will smash the GOP and turn it into an angry social conservatives club... and we will get decades of that above liberal policy out of it.

They're fucked and they know it. The only remaining question is how long can they stall.

Re @Anonymous 9:38. Some people appear to be very angry that the horrors of any future Republican administration, as illustrated by the very real horrors of the Bush administration that vex us to this very day, constitute a sound reason to vote for the Democrats - who, after all, are the only serious alternative - if only to keep the rat bastards away from the levers of power.

Confronted with this harsh reality, you basically have two options. You can vote for third party vanity candidates and throw the elections to the hated Republicans, which has the benefit of spiting the hated Democrats but the drawback of earning you the hatred of all decent people and your expulsion from the Democratic coalition - which, sure as the Sun rises in the East, drags that coalition to the Right and renders your spite painfully counterproductive.

Or you can take a lesson from the despised Religious Right: start today with growing candidates and taking over the Democratic Party from the bottom up. This approach has the drawback of requiring thirty years to get results, frustrating your ADHD need for immediate gratification, but it has the overwhelming benefit of being the only approach that actually works. Just look at Nader, and how his stupid games put Bush into the White House and set back progressive issues for a generation.

PS. The progressive coalition is predominantly Christian, so you would be wise to be less vigorous in deliberately offending your most important allies.

If you're a Christian you're not a progressive. Moderate Christians are bigot, racist, women hating, enablers who value their own feelings more than those around them. They are worse than centrists and moderate Republicans.

I'm glad that they are starting to suffer. Here on the big east we don't forward their job applications, no sense in putting a KKK member (aka a Christian) into your company. In flyover the R's and NYC's finance will help get rid of them.

They are scum, they need to go first. Then we tackle the centrists, who are the second worst offender.